This is apparent to some degree when we study dream events, for there the kind of continuity we are used to, connecting events, largely vanishes.
Instead events are built up, so to speak, from significances. But let us forget that term for a moment and consider association, with which we are already familiar, since our stream of consciousness operates in that fashion. By its very nature each consciousness is a particular, peculiar, and unique focus of awareness which will experience any possible realities through its own characteristics.
It also “stamps” or “impresses” the universe with its own imprint. No portion of the universe is inactive or passive, regardless of its seeming organization or its seeming lack of organization. Each consciousness, then, impresses the universe in its own fashion. Its very existence sets up a kind of significance, in whose light the rest of the universe will be interpreted. The universe knows itself through such significances. Each consciousness is endowed with creativity of a multidimensional nature, so that it will seek to create as many possible realities for itself as it can, using its own significance as a focus to draw into its experience whatever events are possible for it from the universe itself. It will then attract events from the universe, even as its own existence imprints the universe as an event with the indelible stamp of its own nature.
Put more simply from another viewpoint, each of us as we know ourselves has certain abilities and characteristics of our own. We experience reality through the cast of those abilities and characteristics, but we also stamp the universe with that particular imprint of individuality that is our own, and we attract those events that are suited to our nature and no other.
Significances fall or happen in certain patterns, and when these become very obvious they appear as cause and effect. They are simply heavy-handed significances. Our associative processes and habits are perhaps the closest examples that can give clues of how significances operates. Even then, associations deal with the passage of time, and basically significances do not. We might think of our aunt Rita, for example, and in a few moments the associative process might bring us images of periods in the past when we visited our aunt, of her friends and neighbors, the articles in her house, and episodes connected with our relationship.
At the same time Aunt Rita, unbeknown to us, might pick up a blue vase, one that we had just seen in our mind as belonging on a shelf in her living room. Touching the vase, our aunt Rita might think of the person who gave it to her, now on the other side of the continent. That person, perhaps thinking of buying a present for someone, might settle upon a vase in a flash of inspiration, or suddenly begin humming a song with the name “Rita” in the title, or possibly even think of our aunt. If on the other hand any opposing associations existed anywhere along the line, the “chain” of association could be broken. The last lady might consider a vase, for example, but reject the idea. Because of the time element, it seems to us that the first episode caused the others, and that our first association concerning our aunt brought about the “following” events.
The inner significances, however, the associations, existed all at once, to be tuned in to at any point of time. They had their reality basically apart from time, even though they appeared with it.
Actually the three sets of events could easily occur to the three people at once, and is no normal communication happened no one would be the wiser. The inner tapestry of events deals with just this kind of association. Emotional intensities and significances compose the nature of events. In dreams we work with the kind of intensities involved, exploring multitudinous significances. These are like charged emotional patterns, formed of our own higher personal emotions and intents.
Using such significances as yardsticks, we accept or reject probable events. We imprint the universe with our own significance, and using that as a focus we draw from it, or attract, those events that fit our unique purposes and needs. In doing so, to some extent we multiply the creative possibilities of the universe, forming from it a personal reality that would otherwise be absent, in those terms; and in so doing we also add in an immeasurable fashion to the reality of all other consciousness by increasing the bank of reality from which all consciousness draws.